Falling to Pieces
by Silver Pard
Summary: Misa loves Light, even when she doesn't.


**Falling to Pieces**

**i.** **Curiosity**

It starts with Rem.

Rem tells her about Kira obliquely, sideways, via the shinigami called Ryuk, who she knows tricked the King and got another notebook and gave it to Kira.

Rem doesn't understand why she asks about Kira so often, about the shinigami realm, about the notebooks. Rem is a shinigami, she says it herself that her kind don't look at things the way humans do.

Misa is curious. At first she was grateful and content to just follow Kira in the news and on the websites, but now Misa is Kira's equal – no, greater, because she has the eyes – and Misa wants him to know she's there. She wants him to know she's there and know what she's doing and she wants to meet him, see who he is and why he'd do such thing – because he could just as easily have decided to kill his enemies or make money or whatever. Misa might have, if Kira hadn't been there first to show the way.

She thinks she might be satisfied with a glimpse, but she's not. She sees Yagami Light for the first time, and the hunger to know more about him builds. She wants to know him, this serious-looking young man she's been following, and she wonders, guiltily, girlishly, if she can make him smile.

(Misa owns a cat. She knows that curiosity is a teacher when it's not a killer.)

**ii. Power**

It's about power. It's about finding Kira, facing Kira, this boy younger than her, this god with the trembling world cupped in his hands, it's about looking him in the eyes and forcing him to bow.

Kira, _Light Yagami_, so smart, evading L so thoroughly, but not smart enough to trade for the eyes, not smart enough to avoid _her_.

She's an actress, she knows arrogance and pride, knows his is sour in his mouth. She has made this perfect creature choke on his pride, and the power of that is like – fire, like a _tsunami_, like the earth convulsing beneath her feet and toppling cities, like the feeling she gets when she writes a name.

Misa smiles and bows her head and flirts, watches his tightly controlled panic, his fury and his desperation as she backs him into a corner he cannot escape, watches him bend, bow – curse her and break.

Misa is not stupid, or else she wouldn't be sitting here, facing this sharp-eyed man. Misa is not stupid, she knows he'd kill her if he could, but she has the eyes, she has Rem, and for all Kira's intelligence he'll fall before her because he has neither of those things.

Misa has god in the palm of her hand.

(She doesn't like his shinigami, the way he laughs like he knows something she doesn't.)

**iii. Pride**

Misa knows desire, how to sooth or inflame it, like an infected wound. There is no desire in Light Yagami's gaze and it is a challenge any woman worth her salt would take. Misa is a woman worthy of the dare. And at least, she is comforted, if she sees no desire in Light's gaze when he looks at her, she also sees no desire when he looks at anyone else. Light is one of those people who burn bright and hard for cause and need to be taught to feel human want. Misa makes it a vow to teach him.

If Misa were allowed to date Light Yagami openly, his disinterest would make her leave in a whirlwind of injured dignity before it had the time to challenge her. If Misa could kiss Light any time she liked, he'd have lost his novelty and his pull and she'd have thrown him aside like any number of previous boyfriends. Misa is used to getting her own way. For once someone is denying her something and while she knows Light's reasons are solid and for their safety, it makes her reckless in her want.

When she thinks about those other girls, clinging to _her_ Light it makes her furious. It's like an insult; an announcement to the whole world that Misa can't keep her boyfriend satisfied, that he has to date other girls, even though she knows that isn't true. She's not afraid of them, any of them, not even 'the refined' Takada, because she knows that Light is Kira and in the end he must go to her, he has no choice.

She's not afraid of them, but she still wants to brand her claim on him; she wants him to focus solely on her, she wants him so badly she can't breathe and she thinks this must be what it is to love someone.

(Rem keeps trying to tell her something, about Light, but she says such silly things, about shinigami and deadness and empty spaces where humans feel things. Misa doesn't get it at all.)

**iv. Strength**

Misa is scared, Misa is so scared. Her legs ache – they are beyond ache, they are screaming – and she can smell her own terror – sour and pungent, old sweat and urine and blood where she bit her lip before they gagged her – and she's all alone in the dark, all alone except for the distorted mechanical voice.

She curses and she screams and she cries, and there is nothing, nothing at all from the voice but a cold 'what do you know about Kira?'

She wants desperately to scrub at her face and remove the sticky residue of tears drying on her cheeks, and it's her inability to do this simple thing that drives home more than anything else the situation she is in.

_please please, I can't take any more, please let me die_

Misa's captor is a pervert, but not the type of pervert she knows how to play.

They ask her about Light, and they ask her about Kira, and Misa hasn't slept in days except what snatches she can get, and her stomach is cramping, trying to devour itself in desperation, and her whole body screams at being forced to keep the same position and Light and Kira are beginning to blur in her aching head. But no, Light is her boyfriend, and Kira is the faceless entity who kills criminals – like her parents' killer, like her stalker – and they are nothing to do with each other.

She holds Light's face before her as best as she can, like a memory from a fever dream, and it doesn't help, it doesn't help at all, but she knows without knowing Light will never let whoever has done this get away with it. Kira, she thinks viciously, running on without conscious decision, will teach them what it means to break the law and terrorise someone. It is the only time she ever connects the two.

(Until the day she dies Misa will sleep with the light on. If anyone were to ask she would tell them it wasn't because she was scared of the dark – which she is – but for the joy of being able to see every time she opened her eyes.)

**v. Hate**

Misa hates Light, except she doesn't, she doesn't.

Misa hates the cuff around his wrist, connecting him to Ryuzaki, and she hates that they're supposed to date under that dead gaze. She hates the way Ryuzaki can get all of Light's attention with just a word, she hates the way Light watches him out of the corner of his eye, wary and fascinated all at once. Misa remembers when he watched _her_ all the time, like he was afraid if he turned away for a second she'd do something behind his back, like he didn't know Misa loved him and only him and would never date anyone else, not ever.

She hates the way Ryuzaki can say something and know he has Light's attention, whatever he says, even when it's stupid. She hates the way Light thinks nothing of reaching out and touching Ryuzaki, or even _punching_ him, because most of all, most of all she hates the way Light will _feel_ for Ryuzaki, the way his eyes will flare up with the least offhand word. Misa reads romance novels; she knows what the snarling and snapping is really about.

She hates Ryuzaki, with a bitterness she can't quite conceal, even though Misa is an actress and should know better, and when she sees them together, that hideous chain about their wrists, a solid constant reminder that Light belongs to Ryuzaki now, she hates Light, she hates him _so much_, because it's so obvious that he and Ryuzaki are in their own world and Misa can't find any space between them for her.

_Let me in_, she wants to say, only she chokes because Misa is bubbly and personable and doesn't think such things. Misa doesn't stare at her boyfriend's nasty stalker-pervert and wish she were him because she envies the closeness he has with Light. Misa is happy happy happy. Misa doesn't envy their ability to shut the world out and fill each other up, to make their own little universe between them, visible like a slap in the silence and the words and the understanding.

_If you can make space for him--_

(She hates the way Ryuzaki smiles his cold smug smile and she can't do anything because he frightens her – not even for Light will she go back into the dark, the restraints, no – and Light looks at him like he's done nothing wrong.)

**vi. Hope**

Ryuzaki – L – is dead, and Light has asked her to move in with him and all the world seems stretched out before them, an easy walk to the finish line, everything is perfect, perfect, perfect.

Misa closes her eyes to the way Light will touch the scars about his wrist, and the way he keeps looking to his right as if expecting to see someone crouched beside him.

Ryuzaki is dead, and Misa won't have to look at his empty eyes any more, always on Light, and she won't have to watch as Light ignores her to concentrate on L and how to evade capture. They have time now – Light has time now – and safety, and he can learn to love her without sacrificing himself.

Misa is so happy, and everything is so perfect.

(She hates the way Ryuk looks at her, like she can't see him, like she doesn't know he thinks she's so stupid.)

**vii. Convenience**

It's about convenience; it's about power and control and how he can make the best use of her. Sometimes Ryuk will tease him and ask if there is nothing else. Light tells him that he thinks of killing her while having sex with her and that answers the question neatly.

(When people ask Misa in an interview what her favourite body part is, she'll tell them her boyfriend loves her eyes, that he fell in love with them first and the rest of her later. Light will read it and laugh until he's breathless.)


End file.
